Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

Author of

Tell Me Everything You Don't RememberHarper Collins (Feb 2017)

The Golem of SeoulHarper Collins (coming 2016)

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee’s novel-in-progress, The Golem of Seoul, and memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember, are both forthcoming from Ecco Press/Harper Collins. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies such as ZYZZYVA, Guernica, The Rumpus, Hyphen Magazine, BuzzFeed, and Men Undressed.

Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her MFA at Mills College. She has been awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, and her pieces have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and placed in competitions such as the Poets and Writers’ Magazine Writers Exchange Contest, Glimmer Train Fiction Open, and others. She is the Fiction Editor at Kartika Review.

Follow Christine Hyung-Oak

Books by
Christine Hyung-Oak

Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember

The Stroke That Changed My Life

Exploring the territory that Lee’s Buzzfeed News article “I Had A Stroke At 33” — which attracted over 300,000 views within 36 hours of publication — first charted out, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember addresses in a powerful, viscerally affecting and distinctive voice the difficult but inevitable questions prompted by an unexpected trauma like a stroke, questions of mortality, infirmity, loss, identity and creativity and, in so doing, renders a vivid portrait both of a life torn into two and her struggle, often halting and frustrated by events beyond her control, to once more reconcile them.

Praise for Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember

A brave, encouraging, genuine work of healing discovery that shows us the ordinary, daily effort it takes to make a shattered self cohere.

Floyd Skloot, author of In the Shadow of Memory

The stuff of poetry and of nightmares… [Lee] investigates her broken brain with the help of a journal, beautifully capturing the helplessness, frustration, and comic absurdity (yes, a book about a stroke can be funny!) of navigating life after your world has been torn apart.

Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire

Christine Hyung Oak-Lee excavates her life with the care of an archeologist in this stunning memoir about suffering a stroke at a young age. Her account is lyrical, honest, darkly comic, surprising, and transcendent in the way it redefines the importance of family history, memory, and what of it we choose to hold with us. A beautiful book.

Christa Parravani, author of Her: A Memoir

Read More

Read Less

Buy Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember

The Golem of Seoul

The Golem of Seoul, which follows two Korean immigrants in 1970s New York City in search of a lost relative who, while struggling to make sense of the strange land they now find themselves in, take a cue from a classic piece of Jewish mythology they come across in the great cultural mosaic of New York and make a golem from Korean soil that they have brought with them. A deeply imaginative cross-cultural fusion and retelling of a classic story, The Golem of Seoul promises to be one of the most original and unique novels seen in recent years.